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1853.]

The Leuciscus Alburnus, or Bleak.

both carried them about in their hands and ears, upon the head, and all over their bodies. Oh the folly of us men! See how there is nothing that goeth to the pampering and trimming of this our carcass, of so great price and account, that it is not bought with the greatest hazard, even with the venture of a man's life. But now to the purpose: the richest merchandize of all, and the most Soveraigne commoditye thro'out the whole world are these pearles. The

Indian ocean is chiefe for sending them; and yet to come by them we must go to search amongst those huge and terrible monsters of the sea which we have spoken of before. We must passe over farre seas and saile into farre countries, so remote, and come into those partes where the heate of the sunne is so excessive and extreame, and when all is done we may perhaps misse of them, for even the Indians themselves are glad to seeke amonge the islands for them, and when they have done all they can, meet with very fewe. . . . These pearles, to say the truth, are of the nature (in a manner) of an inheritance by descent in perpetuetie: they followe commonly by right the next heeres; when they passe in sale they go with warrantize in as solemn manner as a good lordshipe.

Elsewhere he says,—

Our dames take a great pride in braverie, and have these not only hang dangling at their fingers, but also two or three of them together pendant at their eares. And names forsoothe they have newly devised for them, when they serve theire turn in this theire wantone excesse and superfluitie of roiot; for when they knocke one against another, as they hang on their eares and fingers, they call them Crotalia (rattlers), as if they take pleasure to hear the sound of these pearles rattling together. Now adaies, it is grown to this passe, that men and women, and poore men's wives affect to wear them because they would be thought riche; and a by word it is among them, that a fair pearle in a woman's eare is as good, in where she goeth as an huisher to make way; for that every one will give such the place. Nay, our gentlemen have come now to weare them on their feet, and not at their shoe latchets only, but also upon their startops and fine buskins, which they garnish all over with pearle. For it will not suffice nor serve their turne, to carrie pearles about them, but they must tread upon pearles, go among pearles, and walk as it were upon a pavement of pearles.

Our extracts from Pliny have been long, yet we cannot close them with

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out citing two particular cases in point to show the prodigious price set upon pearls, and the prodigality of the women who wore them. The lady he first mentions is Lollia Paulina, late wife, and then widow of the Emperor Caligula, whom

I myself have seen when she was dressed and set out, not in stately wise, nor of purpose for some great solemnitie, but only when she was to goe to a wedding supper, or rather, to a feast when the assurance was made, and great persons they were not, that made the said feast. I have seen her, I say, so beset and bedeckt all over with hemeraulds and pearles, disposed in rows, rankes, and courses one by another; round about the attire of her head, her carole, her borders, her peruke of hair, her bongrace and chaplet; at her ears pendant, about her neck in a carcenet, upon her wrests in bracelets, and on her fingers in rings, that she glitterd and shone againe like the sun as she went. The value of these ornaments she esteemd and rated at four hundred hundred thousand sestertii (40 millions); and offered openly to prove it out of hand by her books of accounts and reckonings. Yet were not these jewels the gifts and presents of the prodigal prince her husband, but the goods and ornaments from her owne house, fallen unto her by way of inheri tance from her grandfather, which he had gotten by the robbing and spoiling of whole provinces. See what the issue and end was of those extortions and outrageous exactions of his: this was it, that M. Lollius, slanderd and defamed for receiving bribes and presents of the kings in the East, and being out of favor with C. Cæsar, sonne of Augustus, and having lost his amity, dranke a cup of poyson and prevented his judicial trial; that forsooth his niece Lollia, all to be hanged with jewels of 400 hundred thousand sestertii, should be seene glittering, and looked at of every man by candle-light at supper time.

Juvenal may have had this Lollian family in his mind when he wrote those noble lines of precept and warning to his countrymen in office:

If of companions pure a chosen band Assemble in thy halls and round thee stand;

If thy tribunals' favours ne'er were sold
By lost effeminates for damning gold;
If thy chaste spouse from stain of avarice
free

Mark not her progress by rapacity,
Nor meditate with harpy claws to spring
On all the wealth that towns and cities

bring,

Then thy descent from Picus proudly againe said, that whatsoever had been

trace,

Take for thine ancestors the Titan race, And at the head of all Prometheus place. But if corruption drag thee in her train, If blood of Rome's allies for ever stain Thy lictor's broken scourge, or if the sight

Of the worn axe and wearied arm delight, If forged deed thy false right hand shall sign,

If all the temples teem with frauds of thine,

If night and the Santonic hood disguise Thy form from some adulterous enterprise,

Wherefore to me the honours of thy

race,

Which these eternal villanies disgrace?

But, as Pliny says, this is not the greatest example that can be produced of excessive riot and prodi gality in pearls.'

Two only pearles there were together, the fairest and richest that ever have been known in the world; and those possessd at one time by Cleopatra, the last queene of Egypt, which came into her hands by the means of the great kings of the East, and were left unto her by descent. This princesse, when M. Anthony had strained himself to doo her all the pleasure he possibly could, and had feasted her day by day most sumptuously, and spared for no cost, in the heigth of her pride and wanton travesie (as being a noble curtezan and queene withal) began to debase the expence and provision of Anthony, and made no reckoning of his costly fare. When he demanded again how it was possible to go beyond this magnificence of his, she answered again, that she should spend upon him in one supper 100 hundred thousand sestertii (10 millions.) Anthony, who would needs know how that might be (for he thought it was impossible), laid a great wager with her about it, and she bound it again, and made it good. The morrow after, when this was to be tried, and the wager either to be won or lost, Cleopatra made Anthony a supper (because she could not make default, and let the day appointed to passe), which was sumptuous and royal enough; howbeit there was no extraordinarie service seene upon the board: whereat Anthony laughed her to scorn, and by way of mockerie, required to see a bill, with the account of the particulars. She

served up already, was but the overplus above the rate and proportion in question, affirming still, that shee would yet in that supper make up the full summe that she was seezed at; yea, herselfe alone would eat above that reckoning, and her own supper should cost 600 hundred thousand sestertii (60 millions), and with that commanded the second service to be brought in. The servitours that waited at her trencher (as they had in charge before) set before her one onely cruet of sharpe vinegar, the strength whereof is able to dissolve pearles. Now she had at her eares hanging those two most precious pearles, the singular and onely jewels of the world, and even nature's wonder. As Anthony looked wistfully upon and expected what shee would doo, she took one of them from her ear, steeped it in vinegar, and so soon as it was liquified, drank it off. And as she was about to do the like by the other, L. Plancus, the judge of that wager, laid fast hold upon it with his hand, and pronounced withal, that Anthony had lost the wager. Whereat the man fell into a passion of anger. There was an end of one pearle; but the fame of the fellow thereof may goe with it; for after that this brave Queene, the winner of so great a wager, was taken prisoner, and deprived of her royal estate, that other pearle was cut in twaine, that in memorial of that one halfe supper of theirs it should remaine unto posteritie, hanging at both eares of Venus at Rome, in the temple Pantheon.

It is impossible to read the above recital without perceiving that the great triumvir's passion for the Egyptian Queen was somewhat interested. He loved her, but evidently considered her jewels as part of herself; and therefore when he saw her making away with so much of her attractiveness, fumed and fell into a passion. Here Cleopatra might fairly have turned round upon her mercenary knight, and twitted him as the lady did Hudibras, for his hypocrisy :

"Tis not those orient pearls, my teeth,
That you are so transported with;
But those I wear on ear and neck
Produce the amorous effect.
Each tender sigh and trickling tear
Longs for my million pounds a year.
Your languishing transports are fond
Of statute, mortgage, bill, and bond.

1853.]

87

LORENZO BENONI.*

EVERY man's life is worth telling,

it be well told. Here is a Genoese, neither a genius nor a hero, nor a man of science, whose writings and discoveries invest the details of his early career with a special interest; and yet plain Lorenzo Benoni, of whose existence no one ever dreamt until he published his life, has the magic power to dispute the ground of public interest with Layard, Stirling, and the telegraphic despatches which chronicle the proceedings of the fleets in the Bay of Besika. The truth, since it will come out, is that we are a set of selfish creatures, that the faithful narration of events similar to those which happened in our own lives engages our attention in a much higher degree than matters of greater novelty and superior importance. The sciences have their various provinces; the science of life is of universal application. Admiral Smyth, we are sure, would look with profound indifference upon the newest discoveries in toxicology, and a toxicologist in his turn would care but little for the Admiral's admirable investigations into the nature of the stars which compose the Milky Way. A novel fact in geology will excite a drawing-room full of elderly gentlemen almost to the brink of convulsions, while the same fact makes but a slight impression upon an assemblage of painters. Chemistry has its votaries, and physiology its professors, but the interest they excite is confined to their separate spheres. Biography alone, and history because it is essentially biographical, command universal interest. The Story of a Life speaks to all minds, for it recounts that which is common to all, what all have felt or experienced, and it chronicles the doom which may light upon every one of us. It is a mistake to believe that great achievements and extraordinary sufferings alone have a general and powerful action upon public interest.

The deeds of heroes and the sayings of sages live in the mouths of men, and descend from one generation to

another: Napoleon's conquests will be remembered so long as the world is capable of understanding history; Göthe's opinions, right or wrong, will never lack readers, whilst any interest continues to be bestowed upon literature. But the commonplace fates, thoughts and sufferings, of ordinary individuals, contain sources of excitement at once more natural and more rich than the lives and thoughts of the men of the century, for they are more familiar to the many; the world at large needs no effort to sympathize with them. In a Life a reader or hearer cares less for what reviewers call 'thrilling incidents' and 'grand achievements,' than for a truthful account of all the good and evil that has marked the career of one of our ordinary fellowmen.

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Not as if there were no grand features in such a case! Every life has its thrilling incidents and hairbreadth escapes, its sunny hours, and lurid thunder-laden skies, its scenes of rejoicing, and the days of which men say that they like them not. There is no being so humble, no career so obscure, but it has its touch of romance; no life so innocent but it has its crimes; no soul so candid but it has its secrets. To tell that which is common to all in such a manner as to make it uncommon to all; to impress the general lot of mortal men with the stamp of individuality; to raise the dark curtain which covers the foolish aspirations, the petty vanities of boyhood, and the errors of early manhood; to probe his own heart for the benefit of others, and to make a full confession of all that the mute crowd conceals: such is the task of the autobiographer. None but proud men, of great powers of self-denial and memory, should undertake it; but such men, whenever they write the history of their lives, will always secure a large, attentive, and grateful circle of readers.

Lorenzo Benoni, the author of the Passages in the Life of an Italian, though he does not attain the height, advances to an enviable prox

* Lorenzo Benoni; or, Passages in the Life of an Italian. Edinburgh: T. Constable and Co.

1853.

imity of what an autobiographer ought to be. Hence his work has found favour in the eyes of the public, a fragment though it be. Indeed, Lorenzo Benoni's Life, which breaks off at the age of twenty-two or twenty-three, was not, as far as we can see, intended to come before the world as an autobiography; it is what it is by mere mistake. Signor Benoni-we adopt the nom de guerre, which, for our purpose, does quite as well as any other-meant to write what diplomatists would call a pamphlet. For many years a resident in one of the British isles, he became painfully convinced that, in spite of Italian tours and sundry vapid and high-bred but weakminded gossip on Art and Nature in Italy, the affairs and politics of his country were not at all understood by the English and Scotch, chiefly because we are altogether ignorant of Italian life. Signor Benoni wrote his book with the view of filling up this gap in our stock of knowledge. He sought to show that there is some difference between the Italians of the Coventgarden Opera and the Italians of Italy, and that a familiar acquaintance with Massaniello, Fra Diavolo, and Lucrezia Borgia, though useful in many respects, is not likely to mature a man's judgment in the affairs of Italy. Shocked by the operatic and melodramatic view which sober Englishmen take of the inhabitants of the sunny South, Signor Benoni believed that much might be done for the enlightenment of the British public in this matter if the life of an Italian, from infancy to manhood, were unrolled before their astonished eyes. And such a sketch, in which the romantic monks of the stage figure as pedagogues, the banditti as police spies, and the excitable chorus as cold and cautious traders-such a sketch, showing Italian life in all its hard and dry reality, with the gauze and tinsel of the property-room struck off, exposed to the broad light of day instead of to the artificial light of an unknown number of gas-lamps, was indeed admirably suited for the purpose the author had in view; but at the same time, he has produced one of the best autobiographies which have appeared of fate years. That the public here

.

acknowledge the merits of the work in its latter acceptation only, is not his fault; for the Passages from the Life of an Italian are fraught with political information of no common order, and teach a lesson which is certainly more instructive than agreeable to the friends of the independence of Italy.

That Italy, with her fatal gift of beauty,' has at all times within the memory of modern history attracted the hoof of the invader and the hand of the spoiler is a melancholy fact; and it is equally sad to think that the most gifted among the nations of the Continent should, even in the nineteenth century, remain in a state of hopeless division, weakness and subjugation; that the language in which Dante and Ariosto wrote, and in which Pulczi perpetrated his elegant Voltairean blasphemies, long before Voltaire was ever heard of, should be shackled by the fetters of the censor, that the great and wicked men of mediaeval Italy should have fallen only to admit a race of foreign tyrants, and that a teeming soil, the most genial skies, the home of glorious acts, and the reminiscences of classic antiquity should be handed over to a monk, a Bourbon, and a Habsburg. Surely it creates a strange feeling in the breasts of Englishmen when they read of the massacres of Brescia, the womenwhippings of Siena, the threats which silenced the poets of Perugia, and the paroxysms of fear and cruelty which stain the Government of the kingdom of Naples. The Italian nation, bound hand and foot, and abandoned to the stupidity and brutality of the stranger, presents a lamentable and revolting spectacle. To what further extremes is tyranny to be carried, and how long shall Croat banditti and Swiss mercenaries, lord it over the countrymen of Rienzi, the Medicis, and the Estes?

But what shall we say if we find that foreign tyrants cannot treat the Italians worse than they have been treated and are likely to be treated by their own countrymen ?

A conspiracy had been discovered. The conspirators were a set of hairbrained young enthusiasts, and their object was the general liberation and union of the Italian States.

1853.]

How Italian Prisoners are treated.

There had been no outbreak, as lately at Milan: no blood had been shed in a street-fight. The members of the plot were known, tracked to their houses and arrested. Let us see how they were treated :—

The unhappy prisoners were systematically weakened by insufficient and unhealthy food. They were startled from their sleep at night, by appalling and lugubrious sounds. Voices called out under their windows: 'One of your companions has been shot to-day, and to-morrow it will be your turn.' When their physical strength had been thus reduced, and their imagination wrought upon, they were either suddenly brought up for examination, or a daughter, a sister, or a mother, in tears, was admitted.

Sometimes two friends were placed in contiguous cells, and permitted to communicate with one another. Several days would elapse, during which certain ill-boding hints would be dropped to the one whom it was wished to impress, concerning the impending fate of his friend and fellow-prisoner. Shortly afterwards, the door of the neighbouring cell would be noisily opened, a sound of steps would be heard, followed by a death-like silence, and presently a discharge of musketry, in the court of the prison! By such means was it that avowals and revelations, often false, were extorted.

These are general assertions; but now we come to particulars :--

Francesco Miglio, a sergeant of the pioneers of the Guards, had eluded, by his firmness and presence of mind, all the insiduous inquisitorial attempts to which he had been subjected. He was then shut up with a pretended fellowprisoner, who confided to him, with tears, his participation in the plot, and the terror he was in. Miglio was struck with pity, and a certain friendship sprung up between him and the new comer. A few days afterwards his new friend assured Miglio that he had a means of correspondence with some of his own relations. Miglio allowed himself to be induced to entrust him with a note for one of his friends. There being no ink, he opened a vein, and wrote a few lines with his blood. This scrap of paper was produced against him, and decided his fate. Poor Miglio was shot.

Mental tortures, fraud, and the basest tricks of the vilest of police agents! We now come to physical force :

One of the prisoners, who survived a long confinement, in the Fort of Fenes

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trella, left in his memoirs the following passage: First of all, my books were taken from me,-viz., a Bible, a collection of prayers, and the history of the celebrated Capuchins of Piedmont. They then put a chain round my ankle, and I was led into a cell still darker, damper, and more squalid than the one I had hitherto occupied, with a double-barred window and a door with a double lock. Opposite to this was the cell of the unfortunate Vochieri, another political prisoner. As his door was left open, I could see, through a chink in mine what went on there. Vochieri was seated on a wooden stool, with a heavy chain round his ankle, and two guards, one on each side, with drawn swords; a third, with his musket, was stationed before the door. The profound silence kept was awful. The soldiers seemed in greater consternation than the prisoner himself. From time to time an old Capuchin came to visit him. Thus did this unfortunate man pass a whole week. His dying agonies were indeed long and frightful. At last he was led to execution. General Galateri, the Governor of the Fortress, persisted, up to the last moment, in efforts to obtain revelations from him, holding out the lure of a possible pardon. 'Deliver me from your odious presence,' answered Vochieri, that is the only favour I request.' The enraged Governor gave him a violent kick in the belly. Vochieri, bound as he was, spit in his face. Through a refinement of cruelty almost incredible, he was made to pass, on his way to execution, under the windows of his own house, that his wife, his sister, and his two young sons might witness the heartrending sight. Not soldiers, but guardaciurme, the guards of the galley-slaves, were chosen to shoot him, and the Governor, in full uniform, thought fit to be present at the execution, seated on a

cannon.

Without any partiality for the Austrian rule in Italy, common candour compels us to confess that even the Austrians could not treat the wretched conquered worse than the Italian political prisoners mentioned in the above extracts were treated by their own countrymen-Genoese by Piedmontese, the sons of one part of Italy by the sons of another part. The Austrians acted with less barbarity even in the case of the prisoners of Milan; they butchered them as fast as the slow ceremonial of their courts martial would allow. Silvio Pellico, the memoirs of whose prison life have justly moved so many hearts, when

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